


Weight of Failure

by geeky__chick



Category: Ant-Man (Movies), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Gen, Lots Of Sad, Not Ant-Man and the Wasp Compliant, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 06:01:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14586528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geeky__chick/pseuds/geeky__chick
Summary: Hope watches as Scott turns to dust.When she confronts Steve for the truth, both of them break down.





	Weight of Failure

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why I did this.
> 
> I'm sorry.

Even after all these months, he still couldn’t quite believe it. Most nights, he lay awake in their shared bed, hours after her breathing evened and her body tucked carefully into his arms. He couldn’t stop _staring_ at her. That lovely face smooth and unbothered in sleep, her generous lips parted as she breathed.

After all these weeks, Scott still couldn’t believe Hope loved him.

He pulled her closer, as though there were spare inches between their bare bodies. Hope sighed contentedly in her sleep, turning her face just slightly toward him. Scott smiled against the flesh of her shoulder, pressing a kiss to her fragrant skin.

Hope shifted again, a sign she was on the verge of waking. Scott forced himself to still, not wanting to wake her when she slept so soundly in his bed.

Just as Hope settled back down against the pillows, Scott discovered an odd sensation in his feet. He flexed and rotated the ankles, thinking they might have fallen asleep while he watched Hope dream. That cool, tingling numbness remained however.

He nearly disregarded the strange feeling when the sensation seemed to stretch up the back of his calves with eerie rapidity.

“Hope?” Scott gasped her name, throwing his body onto his back as he shoved the covers away.

His legs were _vanishing_ , numbness racing up as his limbs turned to dust in their shared bed.

“Hope!” Scott yelped her name this time, scrambling to sit up against the headboard.

His lover turned over, rubbing at her eyes as she tried to get her own legs under her. She stared at him for a moment, before following his startled gaze to the ash on the bed where his limbs had once been.

“Scott?” Hope asked, as though not quite sure she was awake. “What…?”

“Something’s happening.” Scott gasped as they watched his groin disappear.  “Well, there goes your favorite part.”

Hope scooted closer to him, her eyes following the dust-line as it snaked up his abdomen.

“Scott…” He heard the tears in her voice, the fear. He reached up with one hand, startled when his fingers crumbled before he could touch her cheek. “Scott. No. Wait.”

“I don’t think that’s an option, babe.” Scott replied, shaking his head. “I love you. Hope, I love you. Tell Cassie I love her, too.”

“Scott.” Hope trembled as she shifted closer to him. He dragged his eyes over her, capturing the image of her in his mind, hoping he could take the memory with him wherever he was heading.

“Better tell me you love me back. I think we’re out of time.” Breathing became a Herculean effort as the numbness trickled up into his chest.

His lover shimmied a little closer, her knees sliding in the dust that had been his body. Scott met those hazel eyes he loved, hating the tears shining in them. She cupped his cheeks, thumbs sliding over his cheekbones. Scott closed his eyes, relishing the touch as everything south of his neck seemed to disappear.

“I love you,” Hope gasped. “I’ll fix this. Whatever it is. I’ll fix it.”

Scott smiled, opening his eyes as he felt his face cease to be flesh.

“I know. If anyone can, it’ll be you. I love you. I lo-“

Hope’s voice screaming his name chased him into the void.

~**~

He stood on the balcony of the New Avengers Facility, in the place he knew Tony preferred. He hadn’t been here since everything went to hell, when he turned on one friend to spare another, when his lie tore the Avengers apart.

Hindsight being 20/20, Steve knew his part in destroying the Avengers. He hated himself for it, for the division that left his family fractured all over the globe.

His eyes swept over the manicured lawns of their old home, the silence so oppressive he could hardly breathe through it.

The weight of a universe fractured rested on his shoulders. Half. Half of Earth’s population had been reported as disintegrated out of existence as they lost the battle for the universe. Rich. Poor. Old. Newborn. Heroic. Criminal. It made no difference, spared none. A random act of genocide on a scale never before seen in the history of the cosmos.

Guilt weighed on Steve Rogers as he contemplated the mistakes they made, the chances they took. Grief threatened to drag him under, and not only for those he had known and loved and lost. The world, the world trusted the Avengers, trusted _him_ and he had failed them utterly. Families were sundered, lovers ripped from the arms of their beloved. The split right down the middle of his world left the people confused, mourning, _angry._

Each loss knifed at Steve’s heart, a reminder of his failure.

And Tony… Where was Tony? Had he survived that alien ship? Had Thanos ended him and the ‘wizard’ in his quest for the Time stone?

Or had Tony survived Thanos’ assault only to end at the snap of a Titan’s fingers?

He stood on that balcony in perfect stillness, allowing the grief, the guilt, to consume him.

So much loss, and death, and destruction.

Bucky…

“Cap?”

Steve did not turn hearing Nat’s familiar voice or the alarm he recognized in her tone. The only indication he gave of having heard her was the slight turn of his head to the left.

“We have a perimeter breach.”

At this, Steve did turn, hope igniting in his heart.

It must have reached his eyes, for his old friend’s face softened with regret.

“It’s coming from the ground and it’s small.”

A different hope lit in his chest, replacing the sorrow on the tail of his initial relief.

“Lang?”

Nat gave him her customary nonchalant shrug.

“We know it got into the building. FRIDAY is ushering it toward the family room.”

Steve nodded once, striding around his friend and leading her into the building. They crossed the conference room in a few strides, Steve holding the door open for Nat so she could lead him into the family room.

The NAF’s main living area, fondly called the ‘family room’ remained as he remembered from before he and Tony fought in Germany and Siberia. Nothing had moved, nothing changed. There was not even the evidence of Tony having taken over the space with mechanical parts and clutter as he was wont to.

Once, in those stolen years of contentment Steve had found with his cobbled-together family, this room was his favorite place. He had laughed here, cried, argued with good nature. They shared meals, taught Wanda to play poker until she beat them all, tried to make Vision cry with good movies…

This room had been life and happiness and love.

Now, it remained frozen, stale, a posthumous monument to what had been, what Steve helped rip apart. Steve hated this room now, for the ghosts that haunted him.

In the so-called family room, all that remained of that family had gathered. Thor, in clothing he found Tony had brought over from the Tower, sat in the window seat in quiet sorrow. Rocket, the raccoon he had seemingly adopted as his own, sat on a barstool nearby, tinkering with something on the counter. Rhodes, still wearing his mechanical brace, stood at FRIDAY’S display, watching the approach of something small and clever.

Nat moved toward Bruce, who took a place beside Thor. Whatever those two had shared created a bond Steve had rarely seen his friends give in to. They were close, they were almost brothers. Steve envied that. He’d never felt so alone in all his life.

“Breach.”

Rhodes spoke as he turned to look at the vent above his head.

Steve followed his eye line, barely catching a glimpse of the tiny speck of black that flew into the room. It hovered for a moment before turning toward Steve and erupting with an explosion of size.

The hope that burrowed into his heart died when he caught sight of the yellow and black suit, the wings, the helmet that was not that of Scott Lang.

Terror overtook the joy, his heart knowing what his brain would not yet acknowledge.

The facemask pulled up, revealing an unfamiliar woman. Her complexion bore the splotches of recent weeping, those hazel eyes ringed with red. She lifted her hands to pull the helmet off, dropping it at Steve’s feet in a motion that betrayed her hurt, her confusion, her rage.

“Where is Scott?”

Her voice wavered, though Steve could see the strength she had used to get her this far. He swallowed over the lump of emotion in his throat, staring at the woman he’d only ever heard of from his friend.

“Hope.”

“Where is he?” Hope demanded, taking a menacing step toward Steve.

Thor and Nat moved to intervene, but Steve shook his head just slightly. She didn’t want to hurt him. She only wanted what everyone else on the planet did: an explanation.

“Scott’s gone?” Steve asked quietly.

“He turned to dust in my arms.” Hope said, her voice losing some of its even tone. “And when I went to check on his daughter, I found her gone. And her mother. My father. What the hell happened, Rogers?”

“Hope.” Steve choked on the word, on the taunt of her very name. “I’m sorry.”

“What the _fuck_ happened?” She screamed the words this time, taking another step to him and grasping his shirt with both hands. “What did you _do_?”

“Hope, listen to me.”

It was Nat who spoke this time, moving toward the other woman with one hand on the pistol strapped to her thigh. Hope turned, releasing Steve’s shirt as she did so. Nat explained, quickly, what had happened in Wakanda. Thanos, the Stones, the failure of the Avengers and the loss of their friends. Hope’s expression never changed, even as she realized what Natasha was telling her.

“He snapped his fingers,” Nat finished. “And removed half of the universe from existence.”

“How do we fix it?” Hope asked, resolve in every word. “What’s the plan here? How do we get them back?”

Silence filled the room, heavy and tinged with everything no one could say. Steve looked at the floor, unable to stomach looking into the devastated face of a woman left without the man she loved. Her family, Steve’s failure had cost her the family she loved.

No one had the heart, the _strength_ to say what none of them could.

When Steve raised his eyes again, Hope had turned back to him. Her chest rose and fell with rapid breathing, her hands shook visibly through the gloves of her suit. Fresh tears welled in her eyes a beat before they crashed down her cheeks.

“There isn’t a plan.”

Steve whispered the words in a rush, the first time he had admitted that he didn’t know what to do aloud.

At this, Hope collapsed. She crumpled to her knees, staring at the carpeting Tony had argued with Steve over for weeks. Her body shook until Steve was sure he could hear her bones crashing together. The backs of his own eyes stung as he watched the last faith of the woman before him shattered at their feet.

Without thinking, Steve kneeled on the floor in front of Scott Lang’s beloved, reaching out with hands that trembled as mightily as her shoulders did. As Hope began to cry, Steve braced his hands on her shoulders, offering some comfort when all he wanted to do was die inside.

She looked up at him, the devastation written on her lovely face. Scott had mentioned her only once, as they prepared for battle in Leipzig, but her effect on him had been obvious. Steve couldn’t even find the joy in the fact that they’d finally stopped dancing around one another. They’d had so little time to be together.

“I’m sorry.” Steve whispered, drawing the weeping woman into his arms. “I’m so sorry, Hope.”

No one else in the room moved. Steve held Hope in his arms, suit and all, as she sobbed her broken heart all over his shirt.

He did not offer a hollow promise to fix things, or a rousing speech about how good always triumphed over evil. It wasn’t in him, not now, not with the evidence of this universal catastrophe in his arms.

Steve merely held her as she cried, the weight of that fractured universe on his shoulders pressing more firmly.


End file.
